April 2020 – Page 2 – Stuck in a Book

I’m over at Shiny New Books with a review of A Bite of the Apple – the new memoir by Lennie Goodings about Virago Books. It’s a fascinating and personal book – here’s the full review, and below is the opening of what I wrote.

There’s a certain variety of person who can always spot a bottle-green spine at a hundred paces, and has faced the agonising decision about whether to shelve their Virago Modern Classics together or in with the rest of their books. I, reader, am one such person (and they’re shelved together, for what it’s worth) – Virago Modern Classics has introduced me to any number of wonderful writers, and I have plenty left to read. And it’s chiefly the idea of finding out more about the VMCs that made me delighted when I heard that Lennie Goodings had written A Bite of the Apple.

#1920Club – starting soon!

StuckinaBook All April 7, 2020 21 Comments

It’s that time of year again – though time has ceased to mean very much to me. But it IS April and it IS time for another club year – this time, our earliest yet: 1920 club.

It’s kicking off on Monday – join me and Karen in reading any book published in 1920, and sharing your thoughts on your blog, on GoodReads or LibraryThing, or in the comments on our posts. Just drop us a link when you’re done, and together we’ll build up a good picture of what the reading world was like 100 years ago! All books welcome, and all languages – as long as it was first published in 1920, then perfect.

It’s a weird, strange, anxious time – I think taking a trip back to 1920 seems quite inviting. But obviously if you’re not feeling like you can read anything at the moment, there’s absolutely no guilt in giving this one a miss. Join us in October for whatever the next club year is, and hopefully we’ll be back to normal!

Tea or Books? #83: Comfort Zones (Yes or No?) and Two Willa Cather Novels

StuckinaBook Tea or Books? April 6, 2020April 4, 2020Cather, podcast 8 Comments

Comfort zones, comfort novels, and two novels by Willa Cather – welcome to episode 83!

In the first half of this episode, Rachel and I talk about whether or not we have comfort zones when it comes to reading – and what our comfort reading is, which isn’t quite the same question. In the second half, we pit two Willa Cather novels against each other: A Lost Lady and Lucy Gayheart.

We hope that Tea or Books? can be a ray of sunshine in this complicated and anxious time. We’ll keep recording as much as we can! Do let us know if you have any suggestions for future episodes – and please do rate and review us at your podcast app of choice SHOULD you wish. You can find us at Apple Podcasts, and we’re on Spotify too now. If you’d like to support the podcast, that’s an option at Patreon.

You can get in touch at teaorbooks@gmail.com. Please do!

The books and authors we mention in this episode are:

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart
Tension by E.M. Delafield
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
Denis Mackail
Rose Macaulay
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm
Virginia Woolf
Gertrude Stein
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Two Lives by Janet Malcolm
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman
Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker
Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner
The Love Child by Edith Olivier
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The People on the Bridge by Wisława Szymborska
Circe by Madeleine Miller
Miss Read
Agatha Christie
Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill
The Illustrated Dustjacket 1920-1970 by Martin Salisbury
Penguin By Design by Phil Baines
When I Was A Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson
The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford
The Road to Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead
The Shelf by Phyllis Rose
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet
A Reader on Reading by Alberto Manguel
The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
Packing My Library by Alberto Manguel
Jorge Luis Borges
The Professor’s House by Willa Cather
Alexander’s Bridge by Willa Cather
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley
Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather
Aunt Mame by Patrick Dennis
Her Son’s Wife by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Who’s the most annoying man in literature?

StuckinaBook All April 1, 2020 92 Comments

I’m not doing very well at book reviews at the moment, though there is quite a pile to write about. So I’m going to go for a fun, silly, interactive post instead, based on a question that came up on Twitter a while ago. We were talking about the most inspiring heroines, and decided to flip it – who is the most annoying man in literature?

Crucially, this is annoying, nor evil. We’re not looking for the Heathcliffs of this world, driven only by hatred and evil. We’re talking the ones who really get under your skin – either deliberately on the part of the author, or not.

My choice: Henry from E.M. Forster’s Howards End. The way Forster writes his dialogue is so clever – everything he says is based on some sort of internal logic that is hard to untangle, even when you know it is selfish and ruthless. When his wife questions his decisions, he focuses on the indignity of being questioned, not on the decisions he’s made. Just thinking about him riles me up!

Other suggestions that came up – Mr Rochester from Jane Eyre [my view: can’t stand him, but he might be cruel rather than annoying], Edward Casuabon from Middlemarch [I haven’t read it so can’t comment] and Angel Clare from Tess of the D’Ubervilles [yep, tracks].

I think, to really win this category, it has to be a character that the author has deliberately made annoying, and not in a funny way. Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice would be enormously irritating to be around, but I can’t imagine many readers are annoyed when reading about him because Austen is so funny about it.

Over to you – who would you pick?